It is increasingly becoming a more common view among many analysts of modern competitive businesses and industries that the underlying governance structure and business processes that form the backbone of a given business entity will often be central to the execution and success of whatever competitive strategies that are implemented by that business entity. For example, how managers view the capabilities and challenges of their business can be dictated in large part by the organizational philosophy of their business entity, and these views in turn impact how they approach implementing the solutions to those challenges. Thus, the various factors unique and inherent to the philosophy of a given business entity, which is embodied by, among other things, managerial structure, governance style, business model, culture, and the like, interact in complex ways with a multitude of external factors from the competitive environment to determine the ultimate success or failure of any given competitive business strategy. In the world of business, a strategy that works well for one business in an industry could very well prove disastrous for a competitor.
Regardless of the philosophy used, it is a constant that successful innovation feeds growth. Therefore some sort of consistent innovation is necessary for long term success of any business. Conventionally, innovation is thought of as a discrete concept that encompasses the activities associated with generation and realization of new products and services. More evolved thinking, however, broadly defines innovation as including everything from coming up with and selecting ideas, developing and commercializing the ideas, and otherwise evolving a business through, for example, new marketing channels, new branding, and new business models.
The key for executives is to find ways to foster successful innovation that works for their business. While copying of market leaders is commonplace, competing successfully is not that easy. Executives and other high level managers cannot simply monitor the actions of their competitors and follow a practice of copying or otherwise adopting the successful business strategies and processes of their various competitors. Nevertheless, the continuous flow of information provided by the competitive marketplace, regarding market leaders as well as failures, should be leveraged to the full extent possible.
In this regard, business managers are trained to seek guidance by analyzing not just broadly focused industry data but also case studies that describe the circumstances of, strategic responses taken by, and results, obtained by similar companies under similar circumstances. These case studies may include anecdotal analyses regarding particular strategies that worked or did not work under a certain set of circumstances, and numeric financial studies supporting those analyses. To limit the risk in implementing a significant new strategy, business managers generally prefer to have first identified a case study concerning a similarly situated company, then have analyzed how that similarly situated company had successfully implemented similar strategic plan, and finally have concluded that at least some portions of that plan could be successfully adapted to the manager's needs.
Unfortunately, the positions of no two companies are absolutely identical, and case studies have the most relevance and usefulness to those companies that have similar situations to the company described in the case study. Therefore, in applying a case study approach it is necessary to identify appropriate case studies that have some similarity to and therefore the possibility of some applicability to the subject company's situation. Thus, executives and other business managers are left with the task of constantly trying to evolve and improve their internal business processes and infrastructure to spur innovation and growth while operating under a limited access to relevant and readily accessible information through which to review potential strategies.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for improved methods and tools for assisting today's managers in identifying, addressing and resolving the factors that hinder the innovation within, and thus the growth and profitability of, their businesses. It would be advantageous if such methods and tools were capable of assisting users in diagnosing the innovation-hindering factors of a subject business as well as capable of providing users with the ability to locate easily and study the types of available competitive and market information that managers need to assess new strategies to improve innovation. Such methods and tools that would allow easy identification of and simplified and objective analysis of various pro-innovation strategies that potentially may be used managers to unleash innovation could provide significant value realization.